1. There’s something valuable you’re delivering and not yet charging for.
   There are multiple reasons you and your product was chosen by your customers over their available alternatives. Some of them you know about and have priced. Others you’re not yet aware of. Maybe it’s something unique to your organization’s operations or culture or product. At a high level, this might show up on a P&L as “brand value” or “goodwill” or “pricing power”. Articulating and quantifying the value you deliver naturally, from your customers perspective, is the fastest way to grow ACV, ARR,  and LTV.
2. There’s something your best customers are asking for that you’re not yet offering.
   Your best customers trust you and enjoy working with you. They have more ways you can support them. If you’d like. Have they become so exasperated that they’ve directly asked you for additional help? Have you offered them anything new lately? Sometimes a very narrow definition of what our business is, and what our product lines are, mask the growth opportunities right in front of us. Maybe this is training, services, managed solutions, deeper integrations. We should at least consider it as someone will capture that revenue. It should be you.
3. Price is always a comparison against the status quo.
   Every new solution displaces something; a spreadsheet, a manual process, a more expensive vendor, a new hire. Whatever your product displaced had a cost – most likely measure in frustration, which is why they’re looking for an alternative. This cost is your starting point for quantifying what your solution is worth, minus switching and onboarding costs. To underline the point, customers switch to eliminate frustration – they expect all the good bits to still be there.
4. The only competitors that matter are the ones your best customers name.
   Leaders spend a disproportionate amount of time looking at a self-selected set of competitors vs. talking to customers. Customers have a different view of the market, they have a different set of available alternatives. The only competitors that matter are the ones your best customers are considering.
5. Pricing problems are more likely segmentation problems than price point problems.
   As companies grow, they also outgrow early customers, and early customer segments. The pricing that fit those early customers is highly underpricing, later, larger customers. With a clear segmentation strategy, the pricing and packaging can be more appropriate for each customer. This may mean no longer serving a legacy customer segment.
6. We don’t price our costs. We price our relationship to our customers’ revenue drivers.
    Seats measure headcount. Tokens measure consumption. Neither measures business success. Every industry has a unit of value, a revenue-generating noun signaling success to peers, leadership, and analysts. For real estate brokerages it’s transactions. For medical researchers it’s studies. For safety directors it’s inspections. When pricing reflects this noun, your revenue grows as your customers’ businesses grow.
   
7. Revenue models should accelerate, not hamper, customer business outcomes.
   Revenue models based on incremental cost units (billable hours, credits, tokens) introduce metering overhead distracting both customer and vendor from achieving business outcomes faster. When value delivery and billing are aligned with the customers’ success, the commercial structure disappears on both sides.